After the Spanish conquest, the Nahuas of colonial Mexico learned the Roman alphabet and used it to transcribe oral performances of traditional histories of their peoples. These texts were called ...
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After the Spanish conquest, the Nahuas of colonial Mexico learned the Roman alphabet and used it to transcribe oral performances of traditional histories of their peoples. These texts were called xiuhpohaulli in Nahuatl and are usually referred to as “annals” now. They were produced by indigenous people and for indigenous people, without regard to European interests, and they therefore provide the closest view of pre-Columbian historiography we are ever likely to find. Over the course of the colonial era, the annals changed with the times, but for over one hundred years their flexibility allowed for incorporating the new without obliterating the old. Usually these texts have been assumed to be anonymous, but Camilla Townsend has deduced authorship in the case of most of the key texts, and in so doing, has been able to place them securely in their proper contexts, thus rendering them more legible to modern readers. Each chapter begins with a selection from a key text, then considers who wrote it and why, before finally embarking on an exploration of its meanings.Less

Annals of Native America : How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive

Camilla Townsend

Published in print: 2017-01-05

After the Spanish conquest, the Nahuas of colonial Mexico learned the Roman alphabet and used it to transcribe oral performances of traditional histories of their peoples. These texts were called xiuhpohaulli in Nahuatl and are usually referred to as “annals” now. They were produced by indigenous people and for indigenous people, without regard to European interests, and they therefore provide the closest view of pre-Columbian historiography we are ever likely to find. Over the course of the colonial era, the annals changed with the times, but for over one hundred years their flexibility allowed for incorporating the new without obliterating the old. Usually these texts have been assumed to be anonymous, but Camilla Townsend has deduced authorship in the case of most of the key texts, and in so doing, has been able to place them securely in their proper contexts, thus rendering them more legible to modern readers. Each chapter begins with a selection from a key text, then considers who wrote it and why, before finally embarking on an exploration of its meanings.

On the morning of September 29, 1920, a young poet died in Santiago’s asylum, where he had recently been moved after nearly two months in police custody. Why and how did José Domingo Gómez Rojas end ...
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On the morning of September 29, 1920, a young poet died in Santiago’s asylum, where he had recently been moved after nearly two months in police custody. Why and how did José Domingo Gómez Rojas end up in a prison, an asylum, and a cemetery? This book is an effort to answer that question. It is not a biography of José Domingo Gómez Rojas, although he figures prominently in its pages. It is, rather, a book about the context within which his arrest, imprisonment, and death unfolded and about the experiences of a number of the men he counted as friends and comrades. Covering a four-month period of 1920 in Santiago, it is a book about anarchists and aristocrats, students and teachers, poets and prosecutors, and cops and Wobblies. While narrative in form, the book has a number of analytical threads. It pays close attention to university students and the radicalization and “disidentification” they experienced over the course of the 1910s as well as the close relationships they forged with working people at the time. The book also stresses the importance of anarcho-communism in Chile in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The narrative is structured around the lives and labors of agitators and organizers who spent most, if not all, of their lives in Santiago and thus emphasizes the importance of place to radical politics. This is, in sum, a story of individuals and the collective struggles they waged, futures they imagined, and worlds they occupied.Less

The Cry of the Renegade : Politics and Poetry in Interwar Chile

Raymond B. Craib

Published in print: 2016-07-01

On the morning of September 29, 1920, a young poet died in Santiago’s asylum, where he had recently been moved after nearly two months in police custody. Why and how did José Domingo Gómez Rojas end up in a prison, an asylum, and a cemetery? This book is an effort to answer that question. It is not a biography of José Domingo Gómez Rojas, although he figures prominently in its pages. It is, rather, a book about the context within which his arrest, imprisonment, and death unfolded and about the experiences of a number of the men he counted as friends and comrades. Covering a four-month period of 1920 in Santiago, it is a book about anarchists and aristocrats, students and teachers, poets and prosecutors, and cops and Wobblies. While narrative in form, the book has a number of analytical threads. It pays close attention to university students and the radicalization and “disidentification” they experienced over the course of the 1910s as well as the close relationships they forged with working people at the time. The book also stresses the importance of anarcho-communism in Chile in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The narrative is structured around the lives and labors of agitators and organizers who spent most, if not all, of their lives in Santiago and thus emphasizes the importance of place to radical politics. This is, in sum, a story of individuals and the collective struggles they waged, futures they imagined, and worlds they occupied.

This book demonstrates that ordinary, often illiterate colonial subjects of the Spanish empire were among the Enlightenment’s most adept practitioners. Broadly situated within postcolonial debates ...
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This book demonstrates that ordinary, often illiterate colonial subjects of the Spanish empire were among the Enlightenment’s most adept practitioners. Broadly situated within postcolonial debates about the Enlightenment and modernity, it employs approaches from comparative social science, intellectual history, and legal history to demonstrate that, at end of the 1700s, colonial Spanish Americans began to sue one another with a zeal unseen on the peninsula. Part I examines how and how many lawsuits were generated in the empire. It analyzes civil litigation rates in six areas of Mexico, Peru, and Spain, including Mexico City, Oaxaca, Lima, Trujillo, Peru, the Montes de Toledo, Spain, and the peninsular high court of Valladolid. With chapters on the process of suing, and on the intellectual transformations and absolutist royal policy reforms on law and its practice, it explores legal culture in diverse capital cities and rural districts. Part II zeroes in on three types of civil cases that increased even more rapidly than the general rise of civil suits. The cases that colonial women, Indian commoners, and slaves initiated against masters, native leaders, and husbands challenged an older model of justice aimed at extralegal outcomes and casuistic jurisprudence. As they produced new ideas about freedom, natural rights, history, and merit in court, these subordinate litigants ultimately created an Enlightened law-centered culture. The conclusion considers why Spain and its colonies have remained marginal to the story of the advent of the modern West.Less

The Enlightenment on Trial : Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire

Bianca Premo

Published in print: 2017-04-20

This book demonstrates that ordinary, often illiterate colonial subjects of the Spanish empire were among the Enlightenment’s most adept practitioners. Broadly situated within postcolonial debates about the Enlightenment and modernity, it employs approaches from comparative social science, intellectual history, and legal history to demonstrate that, at end of the 1700s, colonial Spanish Americans began to sue one another with a zeal unseen on the peninsula. Part I examines how and how many lawsuits were generated in the empire. It analyzes civil litigation rates in six areas of Mexico, Peru, and Spain, including Mexico City, Oaxaca, Lima, Trujillo, Peru, the Montes de Toledo, Spain, and the peninsular high court of Valladolid. With chapters on the process of suing, and on the intellectual transformations and absolutist royal policy reforms on law and its practice, it explores legal culture in diverse capital cities and rural districts. Part II zeroes in on three types of civil cases that increased even more rapidly than the general rise of civil suits. The cases that colonial women, Indian commoners, and slaves initiated against masters, native leaders, and husbands challenged an older model of justice aimed at extralegal outcomes and casuistic jurisprudence. As they produced new ideas about freedom, natural rights, history, and merit in court, these subordinate litigants ultimately created an Enlightened law-centered culture. The conclusion considers why Spain and its colonies have remained marginal to the story of the advent of the modern West.

The book tells the history of modern Argentina as seen from the perspective of political violence and ideology. It focuses on the theory and practice of the fascist idea in Argentine political ...
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The book tells the history of modern Argentina as seen from the perspective of political violence and ideology. It focuses on the theory and practice of the fascist idea in Argentine political culture throughout the twentieth century. It analyzes the connections between fascist theory and the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and the military junta’s practices of torture and state violence (1976-1983), its networks of concentration camps and extermination. The destruction of the rule of law and military state terror represent the end road of the twisted historical path of Argentine and Latin American dictatorships. The book emphasizes the genocidal dimensions of the persecution of Argentine Jewish victims. The “Dirty War” was not a real war but an illegal militarization of state repression. This popularized term needs to be explained in terms of the fascist genealogies that the book explores. From a historical perspective, the “Dirty War” did not feature two combatants but rather victims and perpetrators. In fact, the state made “war” against its citizens. This state-sanctioned terror had its roots in fascist ideology, tracing a history from the fascist movements of the interwar war years to the concentration camps. Argentine fascism shaped the country’s political culture. The Argentine road to fascism began in the 1920s and 1930s and from then on continued to acquire many political and ideological reformulations and personifications, from Peronism (1943-1955) to terrorist right-wing organizations in the 1960s (especially Tacuara and the Triple A) to the last military dictatorship (1976-1983).Less

The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War : Fascism, Populism, and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Argentina

Federico Finchelstein

Published in print: 2014-04-18

The book tells the history of modern Argentina as seen from the perspective of political violence and ideology. It focuses on the theory and practice of the fascist idea in Argentine political culture throughout the twentieth century. It analyzes the connections between fascist theory and the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and the military junta’s practices of torture and state violence (1976-1983), its networks of concentration camps and extermination. The destruction of the rule of law and military state terror represent the end road of the twisted historical path of Argentine and Latin American dictatorships. The book emphasizes the genocidal dimensions of the persecution of Argentine Jewish victims. The “Dirty War” was not a real war but an illegal militarization of state repression. This popularized term needs to be explained in terms of the fascist genealogies that the book explores. From a historical perspective, the “Dirty War” did not feature two combatants but rather victims and perpetrators. In fact, the state made “war” against its citizens. This state-sanctioned terror had its roots in fascist ideology, tracing a history from the fascist movements of the interwar war years to the concentration camps. Argentine fascism shaped the country’s political culture. The Argentine road to fascism began in the 1920s and 1930s and from then on continued to acquire many political and ideological reformulations and personifications, from Peronism (1943-1955) to terrorist right-wing organizations in the 1960s (especially Tacuara and the Triple A) to the last military dictatorship (1976-1983).

Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change ...
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Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change over time. It analyzes how people around Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range grappled with climate‐induced glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which killed approximately 25,000 people since 1941. As survivors grieved, they formed community organizations and demanded state programs to drain dangerous glacial lakes. Yet they rejected hazard zoning in their communities. Peruvian engineers working with miniscule budgets invented innovative strategies to drain dozens of unstable lakes that continue forming in the twenty first century. But hazard mitigation, disaster responses, and climate change adaptation were never just about engineering the Andes to protect vulnerable populations. Local urban and rural populations, engineers, hydroelectric developers, irrigators, tourists, and policymakers all perceived and responded to glacier retreat differently, based on their own view of an ideal Andean world. Disaster prevention projects involved debates about economic development, state authority, race relations, class divisions, cultural values, the evolution of science and technology studies, and shifting views of nature. Over time, the influx of new groups helped transform glaciated mountains into commodities to consume. Locals lost power in the process and today comprise just one among many stakeholders—and perhaps the least powerful. Climate change transformed a region, triggering catastrophes while simultaneously jumpstarting political and economic modernization processes. This book's historical perspective illuminates these trends that would be overlooked in any scientific projections about future climate scenarios.Less

In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers : Climate Change and Andean Society

Mark Carey

Published in print: 2010-03-10

Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change over time. It analyzes how people around Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range grappled with climate‐induced glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which killed approximately 25,000 people since 1941. As survivors grieved, they formed community organizations and demanded state programs to drain dangerous glacial lakes. Yet they rejected hazard zoning in their communities. Peruvian engineers working with miniscule budgets invented innovative strategies to drain dozens of unstable lakes that continue forming in the twenty first century. But hazard mitigation, disaster responses, and climate change adaptation were never just about engineering the Andes to protect vulnerable populations. Local urban and rural populations, engineers, hydroelectric developers, irrigators, tourists, and policymakers all perceived and responded to glacier retreat differently, based on their own view of an ideal Andean world. Disaster prevention projects involved debates about economic development, state authority, race relations, class divisions, cultural values, the evolution of science and technology studies, and shifting views of nature. Over time, the influx of new groups helped transform glaciated mountains into commodities to consume. Locals lost power in the process and today comprise just one among many stakeholders—and perhaps the least powerful. Climate change transformed a region, triggering catastrophes while simultaneously jumpstarting political and economic modernization processes. This book's historical perspective illuminates these trends that would be overlooked in any scientific projections about future climate scenarios.

In 1912 the United States sent troops into a Nicaraguan civil war, solidifying a decades-long era of military occupations in Latin America driven by the desire to rewrite the political rules of the ...
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In 1912 the United States sent troops into a Nicaraguan civil war, solidifying a decades-long era of military occupations in Latin America driven by the desire to rewrite the political rules of the hemisphere. For the first time, Alan McPherson takes us inside the resistance to the three longest occupations—in Nicaragua (1912–1933), Haiti (1915–1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924). He asks why the invaded resisted and why the troops eventually left. Confronting the assumption that lofty nationalism primarily motivated resisters, McPherson finds more concrete—yet also more passionate—reasons: hatred for the brutality of the marines, fear of losing land, outrage at cultural impositions, and thirst for political power. Against the accepted view that Washington withdrew from Latin American occupations out of sudden moral enlightenment, McPherson stresses the role of the invaded in forcing the Yankees to leave, especially day-to-day resistance and the transnational network. For occupier and occupied, political culture mattered more than military or economic motives: US marines were determined to transform political values, and occupied peoples fought to conserve them. Based on research in rarely seen documents in three languages and five countries and packed with a fascinating cast of characters, this lively narrative recasts the very nature of occupation as a colossal tragedy, doomed from the outset to fail. It also offers broad lessons for today’s invaders and invaded.Less

The Invaded : How Latin Americans and Their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations

Alan McPherson

Published in print: 2014-01-24

In 1912 the United States sent troops into a Nicaraguan civil war, solidifying a decades-long era of military occupations in Latin America driven by the desire to rewrite the political rules of the hemisphere. For the first time, Alan McPherson takes us inside the resistance to the three longest occupations—in Nicaragua (1912–1933), Haiti (1915–1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924). He asks why the invaded resisted and why the troops eventually left. Confronting the assumption that lofty nationalism primarily motivated resisters, McPherson finds more concrete—yet also more passionate—reasons: hatred for the brutality of the marines, fear of losing land, outrage at cultural impositions, and thirst for political power. Against the accepted view that Washington withdrew from Latin American occupations out of sudden moral enlightenment, McPherson stresses the role of the invaded in forcing the Yankees to leave, especially day-to-day resistance and the transnational network. For occupier and occupied, political culture mattered more than military or economic motives: US marines were determined to transform political values, and occupied peoples fought to conserve them. Based on research in rarely seen documents in three languages and five countries and packed with a fascinating cast of characters, this lively narrative recasts the very nature of occupation as a colossal tragedy, doomed from the outset to fail. It also offers broad lessons for today’s invaders and invaded.

William O. Jenkins (1878–1963) was a Tennessee farm boy who ventured to Mexico in search of fortune and became that country’s wealthiest and most infamous industrialist. Dropping out of Vanderbilt, ...
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William O. Jenkins (1878–1963) was a Tennessee farm boy who ventured to Mexico in search of fortune and became that country’s wealthiest and most infamous industrialist. Dropping out of Vanderbilt, Jenkins eloped with a southern belle and settled in Mexico in 1901. Driven by a desire to prove himself—first to his wife’s snobbish family, then to elites who disdained him as an American—Jenkins would spend the next six decades building an enormous fortune in textiles, property, sugar, banking, and film. Already a millionaire when the Revolution of 1910 broke out, Jenkins began speculating in property in his adoptive state of Puebla. He had a brush with a firing squad and later suffered a kidnapping by rebels, an episode that almost triggered a US invasion. After the war he developed Mexico’s most productive sugar plantation, before diversifying as a venture capitalist. During Mexican cinema’s Golden Age in the 1940s and 1950s, Jenkins lorded over the industry with a monopoly of theaters and a major role in production. Reputed as an exploiter of workers, a puppet-master of politicians, and Mexico’s richest industrialist, Jenkins became the gringo that Mexicans most loved to loathe. After the death of his wife, wracked by guilt at having abandoned her, Jenkins became increasingly dedicated to philanthropy, finally creating a charitable foundation to administer his $60 million fortune. Still operating today, the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation helped set up two prestigious universities and set a precedent for US-style foundations in Mexico.Less

Jenkins of Mexico : How a Southern Farm Boy Became a Mexican Magnate

Andrew Paxman

Published in print: 2017-06-15

William O. Jenkins (1878–1963) was a Tennessee farm boy who ventured to Mexico in search of fortune and became that country’s wealthiest and most infamous industrialist. Dropping out of Vanderbilt, Jenkins eloped with a southern belle and settled in Mexico in 1901. Driven by a desire to prove himself—first to his wife’s snobbish family, then to elites who disdained him as an American—Jenkins would spend the next six decades building an enormous fortune in textiles, property, sugar, banking, and film. Already a millionaire when the Revolution of 1910 broke out, Jenkins began speculating in property in his adoptive state of Puebla. He had a brush with a firing squad and later suffered a kidnapping by rebels, an episode that almost triggered a US invasion. After the war he developed Mexico’s most productive sugar plantation, before diversifying as a venture capitalist. During Mexican cinema’s Golden Age in the 1940s and 1950s, Jenkins lorded over the industry with a monopoly of theaters and a major role in production. Reputed as an exploiter of workers, a puppet-master of politicians, and Mexico’s richest industrialist, Jenkins became the gringo that Mexicans most loved to loathe. After the death of his wife, wracked by guilt at having abandoned her, Jenkins became increasingly dedicated to philanthropy, finally creating a charitable foundation to administer his $60 million fortune. Still operating today, the Mary Street Jenkins Foundation helped set up two prestigious universities and set a precedent for US-style foundations in Mexico.

One of the most potent insurgencies in twentieth-century Latin American history emerged in El Salvador in the 1970s. This book examines the trajectories of urban and peasant intellectuals who ...
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One of the most potent insurgencies in twentieth-century Latin American history emerged in El Salvador in the 1970s. This book examines the trajectories of urban and peasant intellectuals who articulated the movement’s ideology and politics in the context of the Cold War in Latin America. Between 1960 and 1980, these intellectuals embodied an ethos of resistance that blended multiple political, religious, and cultural traditions. They drew on cultures of resistance deeply rooted in the country’s history as well as poetry and religion to spark urban and rural mobilizations against oligarchic-military rule that preceded the civil war in El Salvador. The book provides a ground-up history of the polarization and mobilization that brought El Salvador to the eve of civil war. Combining social analysis with close attention to political consciousness, it examines the evolution of political and religious mentalities and ideas about historical change among both urban and peasant intellectuals who articulated the insurgency’s ideology and politics. Poets and Prophets of the Resistance utilizes archival sources in El Salvador and the United States, especially public and private archives that document Catholic Church history, university politics, intellectuals, literary groups, social movements, insurgencies, and repression. It also relies on original interviews with men and women who took part in Salvadoran politics and cultural life in the 1950s through 1970s. The book suggests that the trajectories of intellectuals and revolutionary movements, even in geographically small countries like El Salvador, can reshape the history of the Cold War in Latin America.Less

Poets and Prophets of the Resistance : Intellectuals and the Origins of El Salvador's Civil War

Joaquín M. Chávez

Published in print: 2017-04-20

One of the most potent insurgencies in twentieth-century Latin American history emerged in El Salvador in the 1970s. This book examines the trajectories of urban and peasant intellectuals who articulated the movement’s ideology and politics in the context of the Cold War in Latin America. Between 1960 and 1980, these intellectuals embodied an ethos of resistance that blended multiple political, religious, and cultural traditions. They drew on cultures of resistance deeply rooted in the country’s history as well as poetry and religion to spark urban and rural mobilizations against oligarchic-military rule that preceded the civil war in El Salvador. The book provides a ground-up history of the polarization and mobilization that brought El Salvador to the eve of civil war. Combining social analysis with close attention to political consciousness, it examines the evolution of political and religious mentalities and ideas about historical change among both urban and peasant intellectuals who articulated the insurgency’s ideology and politics. Poets and Prophets of the Resistance utilizes archival sources in El Salvador and the United States, especially public and private archives that document Catholic Church history, university politics, intellectuals, literary groups, social movements, insurgencies, and repression. It also relies on original interviews with men and women who took part in Salvadoran politics and cultural life in the 1950s through 1970s. The book suggests that the trajectories of intellectuals and revolutionary movements, even in geographically small countries like El Salvador, can reshape the history of the Cold War in Latin America.

Willie Hiatt

History, Latin American History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

This book examines technology, modern identity, and history-making in Peru by telling the story of the surprising success of Peruvian pilots and how their achievements generated great optimism that ...
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This book examines technology, modern identity, and history-making in Peru by telling the story of the surprising success of Peruvian pilots and how their achievements generated great optimism that this new technology could lift the country out of its self-perceived backwardness. Though poor infrastructure, economic woes, a dearth of technical expertise, and a ghastly number of pilot deaths slowed the project after the first flights over Lima in 1911, the image of intrepid Peruvian pilots inspired a new sense of national possibility. Airplanes seemed to embody not just technological progress but enlightened rationality, capitalist enterprise, and nation-state aggrandizement. By 1928, three commercial lines were transporting passengers, mail, and merchandise from Lima to other parts of the country and South America. The expansion of Peruvian aviation illuminates how a Eurocentric modernizing vision has served as a powerful organizing force in regions with ambivalent relationships to the West. This technology simultaneously naturalized modernity and generated dissatisfaction with inferior or inauthentic results. More broadly, the fitful development of Peru’s aviation venture underscores the important role that technology plays in larger, complex historical processes. Even as politicians, businessmen, military officials, journalists, and ruling oligarchs felt a special kinship with Peru’s aviation project, diverse socioeconomic groups engaged aviation to challenge power asymmetries and historical silences rooted in Peru’s postcolonial past. Most observers at the time considered airplanes a universal technology that performed the same function in Europe, the United States, and Peru. In reality, how Peruvians mobilized and understood airplanes reflected culturally specific values and historical concerns.Less

The Rarified Air of the Modern : Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes

Willie Hiatt

Published in print: 2016-11-24

This book examines technology, modern identity, and history-making in Peru by telling the story of the surprising success of Peruvian pilots and how their achievements generated great optimism that this new technology could lift the country out of its self-perceived backwardness. Though poor infrastructure, economic woes, a dearth of technical expertise, and a ghastly number of pilot deaths slowed the project after the first flights over Lima in 1911, the image of intrepid Peruvian pilots inspired a new sense of national possibility. Airplanes seemed to embody not just technological progress but enlightened rationality, capitalist enterprise, and nation-state aggrandizement. By 1928, three commercial lines were transporting passengers, mail, and merchandise from Lima to other parts of the country and South America. The expansion of Peruvian aviation illuminates how a Eurocentric modernizing vision has served as a powerful organizing force in regions with ambivalent relationships to the West. This technology simultaneously naturalized modernity and generated dissatisfaction with inferior or inauthentic results. More broadly, the fitful development of Peru’s aviation venture underscores the important role that technology plays in larger, complex historical processes. Even as politicians, businessmen, military officials, journalists, and ruling oligarchs felt a special kinship with Peru’s aviation project, diverse socioeconomic groups engaged aviation to challenge power asymmetries and historical silences rooted in Peru’s postcolonial past. Most observers at the time considered airplanes a universal technology that performed the same function in Europe, the United States, and Peru. In reality, how Peruvians mobilized and understood airplanes reflected culturally specific values and historical concerns.

This book examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and ...
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This book examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who subscribed to particular race-ethnic, class, and gender ideologies as they encountered barriers and obstacles in a society that often treated Mexicans as a nonwhite minority. Middle-class transborder activists sought to redeem the Mexican masses from body politic exclusions in part by encouraging them to become identified with the nation-state. Redeeming la raza was as much about saving them from traditional modes of thought and practices that were perceived as hindrances to progress as it was about saving them from race and class-based forms of discrimination that were part and parcel of modernity. At the center of this link between modernity and discriminatory practices based on social constructions lay the economic imperative for the abundant and inexpensive labor power that the modernization process required. Labeling groups of people as inferior helped to rationalize their economic exploitation in a developing modern nation-state that also professed to be a democratic society founded upon principles of political egalitarianism. This book presents cases of transborder activism that demonstrate how the politics of respectability and the politics of radicalism operated, often at odds but sometimes in complementary ways.Less

Gabriela González

Published in print: 2018-07-17

This book examines the gendered and class-conscious political activism of Mexican-origin people in Texas from 1900 to 1950. In particular, it questions the inter-generational agency of Mexicans and Mexican Americans who subscribed to particular race-ethnic, class, and gender ideologies as they encountered barriers and obstacles in a society that often treated Mexicans as a nonwhite minority. Middle-class transborder activists sought to redeem the Mexican masses from body politic exclusions in part by encouraging them to become identified with the nation-state. Redeeming la raza was as much about saving them from traditional modes of thought and practices that were perceived as hindrances to progress as it was about saving them from race and class-based forms of discrimination that were part and parcel of modernity. At the center of this link between modernity and discriminatory practices based on social constructions lay the economic imperative for the abundant and inexpensive labor power that the modernization process required. Labeling groups of people as inferior helped to rationalize their economic exploitation in a developing modern nation-state that also professed to be a democratic society founded upon principles of political egalitarianism. This book presents cases of transborder activism that demonstrate how the politics of respectability and the politics of radicalism operated, often at odds but sometimes in complementary ways.

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